


Concurrence

by BooksAsFurniture



Category: The Far Meridian (Podcast)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:55:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28147173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BooksAsFurniture/pseuds/BooksAsFurniture
Summary: Benny was meant to meet someone in the diner, too.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 4
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Concurrence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DetectiveJoan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DetectiveJoan/gifts).



Benny hasn’t given up on the night turning into some kind of noir-ish adventure as the bell on the cafe’s door chimes, announcing his and Peri’s arrival. What started off as an excuse to mess with her solidified into genuine excitement as he monolouged throughout their walk to the diner. Failing noir-ish (noire-ish? Noir-esque? Benny isn’t sure, but he’ll be damned if that’s going to stop him), he’ll settle for adventure of any genre. He’s not overly-worried about the likelihood of _something_ happening; the lighthouse giveth and the lighthouse taketh away, and when it comes to adventures it giveth (again, Benny isn’t sure if he’s using that word correctly but he likes the _sound_ of it) in abundance. 

Adventures aren’t something he needs to look for, these days. They just… Happen. 

So now, in the spirit of adventure, he’s standing in front of a table already occupied by a stranger, the server cheerfully saying; “This’ll be you, darlin’, I’ll leave you with a menu and be back in a few minutes to take your order- The pie and coffee combo’s _real_ good.” 

Benny slides into the unoccupied booth, sizing up the person across the table, hoping for the chance to put his _I-knew-right-away-they-were-going-to-be-trouble_ instincts to the test. He’s already rehearsing how he’s going to relate whatever-this-is to Peri later -Benny’s never been one to let a joke go, especially when fueled on by anything as satisfying as Peri’s half-affectionate, half-exasperated grousing.   
  
(Peri would probably have something to say about those percentages Benny thinks, but Peri’s not here to give him crap for being an unreliable narrator, which means _he_ gets to call them.)

 _Well hello, tall, dark and… OK, let’s not objectify them before I’ve even gotten a look at them_ . They’re wearing a hoodie rather than a trench coat -it’d be nice if _someone_ would commit to the _aesthetic_ of what he’s going for, but the hood is pulled up, obscuring their face- and they’re staring down at the menu, and Benny’s suddenly very conscious that he has no idea what to _say_ . It’s not like he’s ever at a loss for words, exactly; the words that he finds may not always be _good_ but they’ll still come to him when bidden, but there’s only one chance to make a first impression on the stranger that he’s apparently fated to talk to in a diner in a town that Peri’s travelling lighthouse brought him to through the fog, and-

Sometimes, Benny has to very deliberately _not_ think about things. 

(He asked Peri, once, if it’s like this for her, and- “Not think about _what?”_ she’d asked, and Benny hadn’t pushed beyond that. Maybe she’d spent so long in isolation, in her lighthouse and in her own head, that a trip to the grocery store had become as daunting as a walk over the landscape of Mars, maybe it was that isolation that had made facing one as easy -or as difficult- as the other when she began to venture outside again.)

Benny’s thoughts are interrupted when the person across the table looks up, and immediately, he wonders if there's been a mistake, because the man on the other side of the table _is_ here to meet someone, there’s no question of that, but it can't be _him_ , it _can't_ , and he's staring, he's making it weird, he _has_ to say something, and so-

“Hello, Ace,” Benny says.

Because this has to be Ace, this can _only_ be Ace. Benny's seen pictures of him -framed family photos on the walls of the lighthouse- younger, more carefree, perhaps, but even without having seen those old pictures Benny thinks he’d recognise him. Looking at Ace is like looking at Peri in translation; his facial features add up to something sharper, bolder, but so many of the _details_ are the same; Ace shares Peri’s eyebrows, the delicate slope of her nose, the way she tilts her head to the side and squints when she’s uncertain-

"I'm sorry," Ace says. "I don't think I remember you. Wait, wait, was it- Mrs. Bergen's class? Tenth grade history?"

"You don't know me," Benny says, all thoughts of dames and trench coats suddenly gone as the encounter sheds any semblance of being a game, a charming anecdote to entertain Peri with later. "But I know Peri. She's-" he nods in the direction of where Peri's sitting, engrossed in conversation with one of the servers. "I'm Benny."

Ace's eyes flicker in the same direction as Benny's. "You a friend of hers?"

"Yeah.” 

"Is she OK?"

 _How_ is Benny supposed to start to answer that question? _Yes, your sister, your sister who loves you, your sister who was afraid of the world and who you left without warning, without explanation, is OK? No, no, she's not OK, she's_ never _been OK,_ you _of all people have no reason to think otherwise?_

After a moment, Ace seems to take Benny's lack of an answer as an answer in itself. He sighs. "Yeah. That… That's always a complicated question with Peri. Look, I don't have long. This place- I guess I was meant to meet you here? Are you here because of the fog?"

"You know about the fog?" Benny asks, then shakes his head. “Of course you know about the fog, you’re here- You know, Peri’s been _looking_ for you. Are you gonna come back?"

"I hope so," Ace says. "The answer to that is… More complicated than I have time for. You and Peri, you're taking care of each other now?"

"I guess we are," Benny says.

"Good. I like to think I’m a pretty good judge of character." Ace smiles, and Benny notices that his smile is crooked and uninhibited, Peri's smile but without the layers of hesitance that always shroud any communication of joy. "And you seem OK.”

The waitress returns, deposits pie and coffee that Benny doesn't remember ordering. He picks up his mug, takes a sip. 

"Should I tell Peri that I-"

Ace looks over again to where Peri’s sitting, facing away from him. He doesn’t say anything, and his silence stretches to the point where Benny’s starting to feel uncomfortable but finally, _finally,_ Ace says, "That's up to you."

"That's not fair," Benny says, hoping that he sounds righteously angry (or at least, righteously _bothered_ ), rather than whiny, petulant. It’s _so_ hard to express a sense of unfairness without sounding childish, and that’s unfair in itself, but that doesn’t make it any less so.

"It's not," Ace says. "But life isn't fair.” He laughs a little, not unkindly. “I'm probably not allowed to say that to you; I’m guessing we’re around the same age."

"But you're saying it."

"I guess I am."

"Can you at least-” Benny looks at Peri again. “Peri's spent a _lot_ of time looking for you. Some of the places we’ve ended up, you wouldn’t believe-” Benny stops, takes stock of his surroundings, thinks about who he’s talking to, how he got here. “Maybe you would.”

“Probably,” Ace agrees.

“So can you tell me if there’s any point in her looking? She’s put herself in a _lot_ of danger, for you.”

Ace regards Benny from across the table. “That doesn’t sound like Peri.”

“I don’t think it _is_ like Peri.” 

At that, Ace sighs. “No,” he agrees, then, more quietly, he says, “some things don’t change. She can… Keep looking. If she likes. I know, that’s not a satisfying answer, but if she keeps looking she might find me somewhere where I’m ready to be found.”

“You’re not, yet.”

“No.”

“Can you tell me why?”

“No.”

“Can’t?” Benny finds himself persisting, “or won’t?”

“Does it matter?”

This angle isn’t getting him anywhere, so Benny tries again. “I guess you were supposed to meet me so I could tell you that Peri’s… That she’s getting by. That she’s not alone.”   
  
“That seems about right.”

“So…” Benny hesitates. “This is going to sound blunt, but what was I supposed to get out of this? You’re Peri’s brother, and you mean a lot to her and I _want_ to like you but, you’re kind of, you know. You’re kind of putting a lot on me, Ace.”

“If I tell you that maybe you were meant to get company and some really good pie and coffee out of it, is that enough?”

“Not really.”

"Have I given you something to think about?"

"...Yeah. A few things.”

"Maybe that's it," Ace says. "But I'll throw in some advice for free. You seem like you care about Peri a lot, right?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah, she's got a way of making people want to take care of her. And there must have been a reason you got caught up in… Whatever's going on. But Benny?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't lose track of what that reason is. Whatever you're doing here- It's gotta be for you, too. You need something of your own to chase after. Does that make sense?"

“Maybe.”

Ace smiles and raises his cup of coffee. A second later, Benny lifts his own cup and clinks it against Ace's.

He doesn't know what they're toasting, but he doesn’t ask; he doesn't want another answer-that-isn't, not here, not now, and that seems like the only kind of answer Ace can -or will- give.

***

Benny's forgotten about his monologuing, about teasing Peri, about the need for the night to turn into an _adventure_ by the time they’re walking back to the lighthouse, and when she tries to revive the great diamond heist he finds that he’s just.. Not in the mood. 

"Do you wanna talk about… Anything?" She asks, once they're inside.

"I… Don't know." Benny throws his coat over the back of a chair and slumps down onto the couch, instinctively avoiding the spring that's beginning to wear through the backrest- He doesn't see himself as an extension of the lighthouse the way Peri seems to see herself, and he's not sure he ever will, but he doesn't worry whether his introduction to its quiet, contained ecosystem is an unwelcome disruption anymore, either. His habits are starting to conform to its idiosyncrasies, and mostly, when Benny thinks about that, it feels… OK. Comfortable, even. He reaches for that sense of comfort now, the steady strength of the old building all around him, sheltering him and Peri from the storm, from a world where people disappear and can’t, or won’t, make contact with the people who worry about them in the aftermath.

"Want me to make tea?" Peri asks.

"Sure," Benny says, more to get her to stop asking questions than because he actually cares about tea right now; he doesn’t want tea. He wants… 

Benny doesn’t know what he wants. 

"Benny?" Peri asks, as she stands next to the stove, waiting for the kettle to boil.

"Yeah?"

"Detectives can have bad days too, OK? Solving diamond heists can wait.”

Benny shifts his weight on the couch so that he’s facing Peri, and the loose spring digs into his side- He’s _really_ going to have to do something about that. One more item for the endless to-do list that comprises lighthouse maintenance- If he wanted to, he could probably fill his every waking moment with tasks from that list.

“I’m not having a bad day,” he says, and it doesn’t feel like a lie, not exactly- His conversation with Ace threw him off in ways that he’s not really ready to face yet; it made him so _tired,_ but he still has the lighthouse, and the assurance for as long as he wants his life won’t, _can’t_ be ordinary, and Peri, _Peri_.

“OK,” Peri says, and the kettle begins to whistle. She pours boiling water into a pair of mugs, throws in some teabags, and stands there, watching steam rise. 

“Besides,” Benny says, because maybe it’s not fair if Peri has to suffer because of his conversation with Ace, not fair to let it be her problem, “The trail for that diamond case went cold years ago… Or so everyone thought, until private eyes Benicio and Hesperia put their minds to cracking the case.”

Peri looks at him, and he answers the question in her face- _Is this OK, are we, are_ we _OK?_ with a grin. 

“I won’t say a word about your legs,” he promises.

Peri laughs, and crosses the room to hand him a cup of tea.


End file.
